


Chemotaxis

by Rhuia



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-16
Updated: 2012-05-16
Packaged: 2017-11-05 11:43:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/406023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhuia/pseuds/Rhuia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Bountiful thanks to Cyphomandra, for beta and for sucking me into the vortex.  Any entomological errors are mine.</p></blockquote>





	Chemotaxis

It’s the scent that hits John as he opens the door, the dark October smell of leaf mould and warm earth.It’s high summer, though, and for a minute he’s lost in olfactory confusion and then he looks around and sees, scattered all over the floors and kitchen table and bench tops and chairs – oh – in fact, actually leaves and earth.

“Sherlock?” John asks, conversationally.The kettle’s got an alder branch hanging out of it.

Sherlock’s leaning over the kitchen table, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, hems of his pyjama bottoms sodden with muck, long thin hands filthy and rooting around in soil.He looks up, frowns, and looks down again.“A touch more compost,” he says, reaches into a bag on the floor next to him, and sprinkles it on the table.

“Wellies next to the fireplace,” says Sherlock, “And,”

“Don’t step on ANYTHING.”

“With your _feet_.”

“Right,” John says, and goes to the café next door to get them cups of tea.

*

Sherlock’s growing fireflies.

“Lampyridae,” corrects Sherlock, “of the beetle order Coleoptra”.The kitchen table, mantelpiece and John’s favourite ottoman are swarming with larvae.They’re tiny and hungry and Sherlock feeds them maggots.He’s been growing _those_ in the coffee tin. 

Mrs Hudson’s been bought off with promises of new carpet, and been vaguely intimidated with allusions to serial killers and moths and the police.She’s learnt to wear stout shoes when she visits the second floor. John’s taken to eating his meals with her while Sherlock feeds his creatures.

He comes up and watches television in their flat afterwards, scrunched up on a small square of carpet he’s carefully cleared, holding onto the plate he’s brought up for Sherlock.When feeding time’s over, John folds his legs up even more to make room and Sherlock sits next to him on the clean bit of carpet and eats his supper, talking about beetle superfamilies.

Their knees bump.Sherlock smells like damp earth but he’s warm and the silky cotton of his sleeve brushes against John’s wrist.

*

“ – and Phengodidae,” Sherlock says when he gets back from his latest food hunting mission, cold, lips pale, cheeks flushed, dark eyes glassy, “which don’t fly, also of the order Coleoptra”.

It’s slugs today.The larvae are over a month old now, and maggots aren’t enough.John’s put his foot down about the coffee tin, so now Sherlock goes out twice a day and comes back with egg cartons full of bugs.

Sherlock doesn’t have to feed the fireflies any more.John makes coffee in a saucepan on the stove and they drink it while the Lampyridae and Phengodidae go hunting for the slugs Sherlock tosses onto the floor.The larviform, now mobile, crawl over their patch of carpet.Sherlock curls into John a little more to give them more room.

It’s only natural, after this happens a few times, for John to put his arm around Sherlock and pull him in closer.Sherlock’s stiff at first – the conscious touch makes him skittish – but it’s soon clear that Lampyridae, while an obvious predator, isn’t in any hurry to blood its kill (as it were) and he soon relaxes, his hair soft under John’s chin.

There’s a smell in the room, inexplicably, of dry, sweet grass.It’s drawing close to mid autumn and the nights are starting to get cool.

*

One night in late November, his back propped up with a cushion, Sherlock warm and drowsy against his shoulder, the lights turned down low, John sees a flicker out of the corner of his eye.It stops and starts, in and out, a single note in the dark lull.

And then, another, almost on top of the first. 

Another, a beat too quick.

One after the other, the larvae start to glow.Random flashes in random phases, like voices talking over each other.

“Sherlock,” John murmurs into the curve of his ear, but Sherlock’s awake.He bounds away into the kitchen hissing, “Oscillating curve! The autonomous limit cycle frequencies!” at John, and draws great loops in his notebook.He’s in his bathrobe, a smudge against the flickering light.

When Sherlock says, “Callipers”, putting out his hand impatiently for them, then turning to John with the word snapping again in his mouth when John doesn’t hand them over quick enough – and suddenly checks himself, stops moving, stares – John realises he, too, is outlined against the glowing sea.

In-and-out light, in-and-out darkness, and the two of them standing in the middle of the room, halfway between it all.

*

By day, the room is now an unholy, marshy mess and the striations in light the insects produce are jarring, living as they do on the periphery of sight, making John think there’s movement where there isn’t.

“Averted vision,” Sherlock says, cradling one in his hands.It tries to roll over and blinks sideways at him.“You only see the light when you look away.” 

*

That night, the fireflies and glowworms change: one minute it’s onoff----on---on-off--offon, and the next –

– “Phase synchronization,” says John.It’s not the first time he’s had to resort to Wikipedia since he’s met Sherlock.Sherlock twists around to face him, quirking an eyebrow.

The world is a giant pulse of light, walls rippling, the ground undulating, the strobe of it playing over Sherlock’s face, his eyes looking straight at John, his body loose and uncoiled and warm, his beautiful mouth.

John kisses him, deep and soft.Lampyridae and Phengodidae glow together, light the world and darken it together, one movement like a breath hissed in and out, the flicker and stutter of time marked by a bright throb John can almost hear, warming him, _oh_ lighting him, lighting him up.

*

A week later, Sherlock brings in a termite mound.

  


**Author's Note:**

> Bountiful thanks to Cyphomandra, for beta and for sucking me into the vortex. Any entomological errors are mine.


End file.
